Priority 3. Provide humanitarian assistance for extremely vulnerable people, including refugees, returnees and internally displaced persons.
For Afghanistan’s most vulnerable people, humanitarian conditions remained very serious during the quarter and in some respects grew worse. As a result of persisting high food prices and drought in the north and northwest of the country, fully a third of all Afghans are considered “chronically food insecure.” Malnutrition, particularly among women and children, is widespread. Adding to the difficulties, more than 90,000 Afghans were deported from Iran during the quarter—twice as many as in the same period last year. There was also continuing aid to Pakistanis in Afghanistan who have fled disorder in their own country. Across Afghanistan, including Kandahar, violent conflict prevented aid workers from reaching some of the communities most in need. Still, UN agencies with others in Afghanistan have strengthened their capacity to organize and deliver humanitarian assistance in the face of these impediments. Canadian humanitarian aid, augmented by a new $14 million contribution in the quarter to UN and other experienced organizations, is helping to address the multiple hardships afflicting Afghans.
Canadian Objective for 2011: Humanitarian assistance will continue to be accessible to Afghan refugees, and to returnees and internally displaced persons in Kandahar and nationwide.
The third of Canada’s signature projects—the eradication of polio throughout Afghanistan this year—continued in the quarter with 400,000 Kandahar children targeted for vaccination in two World Health Organization campaigns. Of these 400,000, about 375,000 children were reached in January and 350,000 in March. (Depending on several factors, including a child’s health, immunization may require more than one vaccination.) Five new polio cases were reported in southern Afghanistan during the quarter, three of them in Kandahar. Northern and northwestern parts of Afghanistan are judged to be free of polio, but the virus still circulates in southern provinces.
Insecurity, especially in the south, continued to impede eradication efforts as some areas remained or became inaccessible to vaccination teams. A second source of concern is the dramatically rising number of polio cases in neighbouring Pakistan. Canada and our partners in the polio eradication program, including the World Health Organization and UNICEF, are vigorously engaging Afghan government and military officials and ISAF commanders, along with community and tribal leaders and others, to negotiate safe passage for polio vaccinators into insecure areas. Partners have also set up immunization stations at nine border crossings, and immunization campaigns have been coordinated between Afghanistan and Pakistan. CIDA—the Canadian International Development Agency—is helping to fund these border vaccination posts.
Among other Canadian-supported activities, mine clearance and mine-risk education continued in many parts of Kandahar. Mine clearance contributes directly to Afghan development: as a result of demining along electricity transmission corridors from Uzbekistan, power supply to Kabul increased significantly during the quarter.
